Page: Nothing to hide here! In fact, all our firewalls have been ICSA certified. Full reports are available on the ICSA Web site. We have also ICSA-certified the firewall services PIC (acceleration blade) in our M-series routers. The firewalls are also Common Criteria-certified to EAL level 4 which is important for our government and defence customers worldwide.
If you meant to refer to our SSL VPN products, which are more typically used in a Web-application environment, these are ICSA certified using the version 1 of SSL-TLS certification. Version 2 is in progress and certification is expected to be completed shortly. As the SSL-TLS certification is quite a narrow test we also had the SSL VPN gateways independently analysed by TruSecure, a sister-company to the ICSA, the VPNC (Virtual Private Network Consortium), and iSEC partners.
Page: What would you say is the main differentiator that F5 Networks takes to the market?
Howarth: I think our main differentiator is focus. Unlike our competitors, we concentrate on a specific market segment -- the delivery, optimisation, and security of applications. The experience we have in this area has allowed us to build the best products in the industry today and integrate these products with all of the leading application providers' solutions.
Howarth: What is your Australian channel strategy for the L4-L7 market? Do you have the right channel partners for these new products?
Page: Juniper has a strong history of successful channel partnerships which deliver some of the most complex and mission critical networks in the world. The J-Partner program is the business framework for our channel partnerships and it is designed to reward the partner's value-add and to support specialisations such as application products.
Page: What is F5 Networks most successful market sector and why?
Howarth: Application Traffic Management has been our focus since the inception of the company. We have been instrumental in driving this sector of the industry with continual innovation. For example, with our UIE (Universal Inspection Engine) we are able to make a traffic management decision on any value in the entire bi-directional data flow.
We have also evolved strong partnerships with all the major application vendors who use our open API to make our BIG IP product an extension of the application rather than just a standalone network device. These sorts of capabilities have made BIG IP the most flexible Application Traffic Management solution available today. As a result, we have been successful in winning business across all industry segments including government, finance, telcos, and even SMBs.
Howarth: I understand you play football in your spare time. What position do you play?
Page: My football position would have to be Left Right Out as I don't play! My golf handicap on the other hand is far more impressive, I play off four.
Page: What is the greatest piece of advice you were given and did you use it?
Howarth: I once had a sales manager who told me that everybody has two ears, one mouth and that a good salesman should use them in that ratio. So I've always found that listening is much more productive than talking.
This article was first published in Technology & Business magazine.
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